Up to this point we have considered only the prime cost of the pressed man. A secondary factor must now be introduced, for when you had got your man at an initial cost of 20 Pounds—a cost in itself out of all proportion to his value—you could never be sure of keeping him. Nelson calculated that during the war immediately preceding 1803 forty-two thousand seamen deserted from the fleet. [Footnote: Admiralty Records 1. 580—Memorandum on the State of the Fleet, 1803.] Assuming, with him, that every man of this enormous total was either a pressed man or had been procured at the cost of a pressed man, the loss entailed upon the nation by their desertion represented an outlay of 840,000 Pounds for raising them in the first instance, and, in the second, a further outlay of 840,000 Pounds for replacing them.
In this estimate there is, however, a substantial error; for, approaching the question from another point of view, let us suppose, as we may safely do without overstraining the probabilities of the case, that out of every three men pressed at least one ran from his rating. Now the primary cost of pressing three men on the 20 Pound basis being 60 Pounds, it follows that in order to obtain their ultimate cost to the country we must add to that sum the outlay incurred in pressing another man in lieu of the one who ran. The total cost of the three men who ultimately remain to the fleet consequently works out at 80 Pounds; the cost of each at 26 Pounds, 13s. 4d. Hence Nelson's forty-two thousand deserters entailed upon the nation an actual expenditure, not of 1,680,000 Pounds, but of nearly two and a quarter millions.
Another fact that emerges from a scrutiny of these remarkable figures is this. Whenever the number of volunteer additions to the fleet increased, the cost of pressing increased in like ratio; whenever the number of volunteers declined, the pressed man became proportionally cheaper. Periods in which the pressed man was scarce and dear thus synchronise with periods when the volunteer was plentiful; but scarcity of volunteers, reacting upon the gangs, and conducing to their greater activity, brought in pressed men in greater numbers in proportion to expenditure and so reduced the cost per head. In this logical though at first sight bewildering interrelation of the laws of supply and demand, we have in a nutshell the whole case for the cost of pressing as against the gang. Taking one year with another the century through, the impress service, on a moderate estimate, employed enough able-bodied men to man a first-rate ship of the line, and absorbed at least enough money to maintain her, while the average number of men raised, taking again one year with another, rarely if ever exceeded the number of men engaged in obtaining them. With tranquillity at length assured to the country, with trade in a state of high prosperity, the shipping tonnage of the nation rising by leaps and bounds and the fleet reduced to an inexigent peace footing, why incur the ruinous expense of pressing the seaman when, as was now the case, he could be had for the asking or the making?
For Peace brought in her train both change and opportunity. The frantic dumping of all sorts and conditions of men into the fleet ceased. Necessity no longer called for it. No enemy hovered in the offing, to be perpetually outmanoeuvred or instantly engaged. Until that enemy could renew its strength, or time should call another into being, the mastery of the seas, the dear prize of a hundred years of strenuous struggle, remained secure. Our ships, maintained nevertheless as efficient fighting-machines, became schools of leisure wherein—a thing impossible amid the perpetual storm and stress of war—the young blood of the nation could be more gradually inured to the sea and tuned to fighting-pitch. Science had not yet linked hands with warfare. Steam, steel, the ironclad, the super-Dreadnought and the devastating cordite gun were still in the womb of the future; but the keels of a newer fleet were nevertheless already on the slips, and with the old order the press-gang, now for ever obsolete, went the way of all things useless.
Its memory still survives. Those who despair of our military system, or of our lack of it, talk of conscription. They alone forget. A people who for a hundred years patiently endured conscription in its most cruel form will never again suffer it to be lightly inflicted upon them.
APPENDIX
ADMIRAL YOUNG'S TORPEDO
DEAR NEPEAN,—I enclose a little project for destroying the Enemy's Flatboats if they venture over to our Coast, which you may shew, if you please, to your Sea Lords as coming from some anonymous correspondent. If they can improve upon it so as to make it useful, I shall be glad of it; and if they think it good for nothing, and throw it in the fire, there is no harm done. As the conveying an Army must require a very great number of Boats, which must be very near each other, if many such vessels as I propose should get among them, they must necessarily commit great havoc. I cannot ascertain whether the blocks or logs of wood would be strong enough to throw the shot without bursting, or whether they would not throw the shot though they should burst. I think they would not burst, and so do some Officers of Artillery here; but that might be ascertained by experiment at any time. This sort of Fire-vessel will have the advantage of costing very little; and of being of no service to the Enemy should it fall into their hands.